In the Palm of Your Hand — Home
Artist Book
I am a New York based artist photographer that works with such processes as pigment lift transfers, polaroid emulsion lift and decay, lumen printing, cyanotypes, chemigrams, anthotypes, chlorophyll printing and silk screen printing and a curator at Today’s Alternative – Instagram platform that brings together contemporary artists working with alternative photographic processes.
My work tells stories that touch me deeply. I create unique prints to give voice to the narratives that speak about despair and love, isolation and warmth, vulnerability and strength. The project I recently finished is the artist book In The Palm of Your Hand done in a silk screen printing technique. The choice of the artist book format is not accidental. I am a lifelong haiku poet and consider my images visual haiku inspired by the aesthetics of wabi-sabi.
This book explores the concept of home and the meaning of belonging. When I was little my grandma used to sing me a song about what it means to have a home. “It is well known that home is not walls and windows. It isn’t even a table with chairs around it. Home is where you return again and again. It is where you want to be irrespective whether you are joyful, kind, tender or angry and barely alive. Home is where you are understood, where someone hopes and waits for you. Your home is where you forget everything bad that happens to you.”
Each page of this book is created in a silk screen technique. I coat a screen with photo sensitive emulsion and let it dry in the dark. I chose the image I want to use and print it on a transparency. I put the transparency on the precoated screen and burn the screen with UV light. The screen is then washed and dried. This creates a stencil through which I push the ink with a squeegee. I printed the cover of the book and both haiku poems written by me in the same technique. The images of the poems and texts on the cover were created by photosensitive technique and are photographic images as well.
All my life I struggled to find where I really belong as an immigrant, a queer person, a human being in search of true and authentic connection. I think this book shows the sense of longing to be accepted and appreciated for who you really are.